SO, WHO’S EXCITED for the opening ceremony of the 2072 Summer Olympics? 

Fianna Fáil Senator Malcolm Byrne this week put forward the idea, quintessentially Irish in its mix of slavering ambition and grim pessimism, that Ireland could finally play host to the games 48 years from now.

It’s easy to see why we’d make a great host nation. We’ve just broken our record medal haul at this summer’s games in Paris, and we are thriving on land, sea, canvas and pommel. The northwest would make a great spot for the surfing, to be sure, assuming the northwest is still above sea-level in 50 years time, and by 2072, we may finally be adding the finishing touches to the Dublin Metro.

The opening ceremony would be something to behold. Performances by an octogenarian Kneecap and the surviving members of Fontaines DC are something to look forward to, and appearances by our favourite characters from Sally Rooney’s 30th novel (Normal People 5: The War of the Galactic Laser God Kings). Some of it could even take place in the bits of Newgrange that aren’t being used for short-term rental.

Putting together a bid for the 2072 Olympics is an admirably honest admission of Ireland’s efficiency when it comes to our longterm projects — but even with half a century of lead-in time, an Irish Olympics still doesn’t really feel like it’s on the cards.

After all, if we can’t get contactless payment on our public transport until 2028, then an Olympics by 2072 seems unbelievably optimistic. The primary factor in our favour is probably that the rest of the world will be so uninhabitable by then that there is simply no choice but to host the Olympics in Ireland. And if that happens to be the case, then I say we go for it. 

Delighted to share that my memoir ‘Running From Office’ is now available for pre-order. Please click here https://t.co/QDNQHaQaN6 pic.twitter.com/wwwfbuYbn8

— Eoghan Murphy (@MurphyEoghan) August 15, 2024

This week ended with the unexpected return to public life of former housing minister Eoghan Murphy, who announced that he would be publishing the political memoir that nobody asked for.

Murphy’s book is titled ‘Running From Office’ and its cover features a figure sprinting for an exit door. It’s an oddly conceived marketing approach, given that Murphy actually clung on for dear life through two no confidence motions during his time as Minister for Housing. He did unexpectedly leave office a year after winning reelection in 2021 to oversee elections in Armenia and Uzbekistan which, as far as exits go, has more of a ‘sauntering’ feel than a humiliating and desperate escape.

Murphy, who is still only 42 years old, served as Minister for Housing for three years between 2017 and 2020, and shortly after winning reelection in 2020, decided to quit politics of his own volition. He was backed to the hilt by his party comrades and the Fianna Fáil faction that propped up that minority government, and never faced any kind of electoral consequences at the ballot box. 

The book’s subtitle – Confessions of Ambition and Failure in Politics – is funnier again. Not ‘ha ha’ funny but funny in a sort of record-level homelessness, missing-all-the-housing-targets, 30-somethings-still-living-in-their-parents’-boxroom kind of way. 

The book promises to tell the story of “the personal and political cost when ambition and idealism clash with circumstances outside of your control”. Ah, it’s the tale of a tragic hero, then. A man who did his best but was felled by the “global megatrends” that Leo Varadkar mentioned in his final speech as Taoiseach. 

Murphy was often castigated in the media for an apparent unwillingness to tackle the crisis that has unfolded in virtually every Irish street, suburb and townland since 2015. He once compared co-living spaces – small bedroom accommodation with shared dormitory kitchens and living spaces – to living in a “very trendy boutique hotel”. Of people his age, he said: “This is a generation that has a different approach to things; they will sacrifice certain things for others, as we all did when we were younger,” despite his own background of comparatively significant wealth through his father Henry Murphy, a high-profile Senior Counsel.

Anyone who has had to wrestle with the housing market shaped by Murphy’s time in office will take no comfort whatsoever to learn that he is embarrassed by his failings, or that he can turn an eloquent phrase while reflecting upon homelessness first crossing the 10,000 threshold on his watch. Whatever political price Murphy may feel he paid, it is of course nothing compared to the price – both literal and figurative – paid through the nose by generation locked out, renters in inadequate and precarious living, and those who have fallen into homelessness. 

Not to preempt what is sure to be a masterwork in the art of political memoir, but it seems unlikely that any level of “searing honesty” or “self-laceration” (yes, both of these phrases are included in the marketing material) could ever mitigate the frustration that Ireland has faced with respect to housing over the last 10 years.

The book is billed as containing plenty of humour at the author’s own expense, but it is hard to imagine that there is any reader out there who feels like laughing with Murphy, even if he is the butt of his own jokes. Murphy could have figured out his limitations a little bit sooner had he earnestly engaged with the litany of criticisms levelled at him by the public during his time in one of the most important offices in Ireland. 

Murphy’s self-effacing book launch lines up tonally with former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s Instagram post this week in support of boxer Imane Khelife. The Algerian gold medallist has taken up a cyber-harassment lawsuit against several defendants, including such high profile figures as Elon Musk and JK Rowling — both of whom are accused of making false statements about Khelife’s gender. On his Instagram page, Varadkar not only stood up for Khelife – referring to the likes of Musk and Rowling as ‘bullies’ – but even made a pledge to donate to her legal costs. 

It seemed, without too much effort, a more human moment than Varadkar ever managed during his time leading the country (though there were several failed attempts, like when he told us all that Wake Me Up by Avicii was his “song of the Camino”). It is not necessarily mysterious that politicians become better able to show their human side after (or in Varadkar’s case, while in the process of) leaving politics, but it is undoubtedly frustrating. 

Murphy and Varadkar are two of the fifteen (fifteen) Fine Gael TDs who have either left or are leaving politics since the party formed a government in summer 2020. Whether or not the remaining baker’s dozen similarly intend to embark on similarly humanising pursuits remains to be seen. We know Ciarán Cannon has a radio show now and has railed against ‘toxicity’ in politics, so it doesn’t seem beyond the realm of imagination that the outgoing Fine Gaelers are set to reassemble as a band of well-meaning monks, righting the country’s many ills — the causes of which seemed to elude them all those years that they were in power.

Murphy’s book is set for release on Halloween. By that point the general election will probably be on our doorstep, and one wonders if Fine Gael will thank their former party-mate for reminding the public of the catastrophic time they spent in charge of the housing portfolio.

But you never know. Maybe it will turn out that Murphy is a master essayist, the next David Foster Wallace. It seems Murphy’s memoir could have easily been named in homage to one of Wallace’s own collections: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.